cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

My back, journalism, the weather, my bike

Ever have one of those days where the floor was the most comfortable thing you had? No? Just me then? OK.

So I spent a little time stretched out today because my back got all cinched up and my shoulder wasn’t helping. For some reason I decided the floor was a good place to be, and it turns out, I was right.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and I’m not especially excited about that.

I have a new idea about the criticism of journalism. It goes like this, it is as shallow or meaningful as you want it to be, and the format doesn’t have anything to do with that.

Here’s the latest example in the all but exhausted “Real Journalists” versus “Just a Blogger” debate. The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer is struggling with the thorny issues: Is rapper Big Boi taking classes at Auburn University?

The answer? No. But his daughter is enrolling as a freshman. That doesn’t keep a lot of rhetorical questions at bay, though. They just fly out into the ether and are never answered, because who needs answers when you can embed a YouTube video?

I’ve had arguments with people that have worked at that paper about the various values of citizen journalism compared to professionals, and this is a perfectly good counter-argument to anything anyone says in that debate. To be fair, the writer of that sad little post is called an “audience engagement coordinator.” And therein, I think, lies the problem. It is as shallow or meaningful as you want it to be, and the format doesn’t have anything to do with that.

Meanwhile, a writer at al.com stepped in it today. He offended women when assuming they didn’t understand football. Here’s the freshly edited version. It even made Romenesko.

In bigger news of things to read: Jeff Jarvis on how media in different countries are covering the recent governmental moves against journalism. Hint: shamefully poor.

Jay Rosen on the conspiracy to commit journalism, one of the better things he’s written in my view:

This battle is global. Just as the surveillance state is an international actor — not one government, but many working together — and just as the surveillance net stretches worldwide because the communications network does too, the struggle to report on the secret system’s overreach is global, as well. It’s the collect-it-all coalition against an expanded Fourth Estate, worldwide.

[…]

This tells us something. The battle I referred to is not a simple matter of the state vs. civilians. It’s not government vs. the press, either. It’s the surveillance-over-everything forces within governments (plus the politicians and journalists who identify with them) vs. everyone who opposes their overreach: investigative journalists and sources, especially, but also couriers (like David Miranda), cryptographers and technologists, free speech lawyers, funders, brave advertisers, online activists, sympathetic actors inside a given government, civil society groups like Amnesty International, bloggers to amplify the signal and, of course, readers. Lots of readers, the noisy kind, who share and help distribute the work.

This type of sunlight coalition — large and small pieces, loosely joined — is a countervailing power to the security forces, the people who are utterly serious when they say: ”You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” the same people who, as Bruce Schneier has written, “commandeered the internet” for their use because, viewed from a certain angle, it’s the best machine ever made for spying on the population.

If sunlight coalitions are to succeed, it won’t be by outwitting surveillance. Not better technology, but greater legitimacy is their edge. This attitude was perfectly captured by Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, who shut down his email service when the surveillance state demanded his submission. “I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore,” he said.

Sadly, the wrong side has already won this argument.

Elmore Leonard died. I love some of his work, though, since I don’t read hardly any fiction, I’ve never read any of his books. But I quote him in one of my syllabi. Here are his invaluable rules to writing:

Never open a book with weather.
Avoid prologues.
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

Go check out the rest, too.

And, now just to change the subject, all of this rain has hurt the cotton crop:

The fiber-producing plant is not getting the hot, dry and sunny weather it needs to turn the bolls into blooms. If the bolls don’t bloom before the first fall frost or freeze, the cotton won’t be harvestable, farmers and agricultural specialists said.

By and large the rainy season has helped the corn. I thought about that today while I was getting hammered by rain and pedaling around corn fields:

This was about the only time it wasn’t raining, for 34 miles mind you, and it was clearly coming on. And then came the lightning. I’m starting to add miles back in to my rides and this was my reward. Roads I’ve seldom, if ever, been on and one of the stronger storms I’ve ever enjoyed.

Two hours in the gloomy, escaping light and thunder and rain. How was your day?

cycling / football / friends / journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
19
Aug 13

Mondays need better titles, I know

Almost football time. People here are counting the days. I won’t go on and on about it. I’m tired of that to be perfectly honest. I do enjoy it, the drama and the emotion and the collegial cheering. I’ve come to be more interested in the business and the personal. Especially the personal.

Like these stories. I really want to see Shon just blast someone into the dirt, stand over them and say “CANCER!” He deserves that. With playing time in sights, cancer survivor Shon Coleman trying to ‘get better every day’:

The cancer went into remission just weeks after starting chemotherapy treatments in April 2010, and he continued to receive weekly injections following that diagnosis to ensure it wouldn’t return. It never did.

His return to the field came much later, though, as Coleman was finally cleared to practice with the Tigers in April 2012, working back into form ever since.

It’s the versatility and natural ability he showed during his high school career that has him on the verge of breaking into Auburn’s two-deep depth chart, likely the first in line to play whenever starting left tackle Greg Robinson needs a breather this fall.

“I feel comfortable on both sides, really,” he said. “I pretty much got so used to both sides that I can switch up and have everything down pat.”

Another young man, a similar story. Samford long snapper Perry Beasley living college football dream again after beating cancer 3 years ago:

On Aug. 30, he’ll get the chance to run on the field as a college football player when Samford travels to Georgia State. The Georgia Dome is minutes from his home, so family, friends, even nurses who helped treat him, will be in attendance.

And while Samford’s goals are high, Beasley’s shining moment will be realized when he takes the field with his teammates.

“For me, it’s already set — that I’m doing what I love again,” Beasley said. “I definitely think that whenever we run out on the tunnel on Aug. 30, something will come over me that will be really powerful.”

You want guys like that to have that big triumphal moment, check that off the list and move on to big things, knowing they can and they will.

A feel good story of another sort. A WWII POW traded his prized gold ring for some food. Now, 70 years later, the ring has come home:

Last week, about a dozen family members and friends gathered in the living room of David C. Cox Jr.’s Raleigh home and watched as he slit open a small yellow parcel from Germany. The 67-year-old son dug through the crinkly packing material and carefully removed a little plastic box.

“And here it is,” he said with a long sigh as he pulled out the ring. “Oh, my goodness. … I never thought it would ever happen. I thought it was gone. We all thought it was gone.

“He thought it was gone,” he said of his late father.

The story of how the ring made it back to the Cox family is a testament to a former enemy’s generosity, the reach of the Internet and the healing power of time.

Mowed the lawn this evening. Then changed sweaty clothes for workout clothes and got in a little ride. I deemed it a take-it-easy ride, so I only touched 39.1 on the big hill. I did, though, set a new 10-minute distance best for Red Route 2. This is a segment that has a determined starting point where you just go for as hard as you can, for as long as you can, for 10 minutes. It is one of the many nonsensical challenges I’ve created for myself on my bike. This is the first time I’ve broken the first distance mark on this challenge, too. The speed wouldn’t be impressive to you, because I am slow, but I am apparently getting a tiny bit faster. In my first ride after a race, taking it easy on a home 20-mile course.

I will never understand how I get chain grease on the outside of my left calf when the chain is on the right side of my bike.

I’ll probably never understand nutrition the correct way either. We decided that I’m at a negative calorie amount for the day so I was able to eat three dinners. We went out for pizza with a friend. He’s a runner, so it was all miles per minute this, and playlists and marathons that. We’ve become these people. I had two slices of pizza.

Meanwhile, in London, the government stormed The Guardian’s offices to destroy data. Think about that:

I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents… Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.

England is lost. Hope they’re not the canary in the coal mine.

adventures / cycling / I do not know what is happening. / weekend — Comments Off
17
Aug 13

Thoughts on the Peachtree City Tri

I don’t want to use the word with any seriousness as it applies to me — we’ve had a lot of fun chats with people this summer about what allows you to use the word — but we woke up at 3 a.m. for a triathlon, so, today, I’m going to call myself a triathlete.

Said that before the race. Before the signing in, the body markings, the struggling to make sense of a narrow transition area, the restless, nervous and giddy waiting for the time trial swim start.

I stopped thinking that in the water, where I started thinking about I should get serious about swimming. Which means figuring my shoulder out, etc and ad nauseam. In the water I’m just hanging on, trying to finish and save some energy.

And, this morning, I helped save a woman. I came up alongside her just as she stopped swimming out and started swimming up. I asked her if she was OK, but she didn’t say anything. When I pulled just a bit in front of her I noticed her eyes were glassy and she looked like she was climbing a ladder. Went back, touched her elbow, talked to her and she didn’t even know I was there.

In these open water swims they have canoes and jet skis and kayaks to help people. I held her up while someone summoned over a nearby kayak and she grabbed on. I saw her later, I think it was her, on the bike. She was going out as I was coming back. And she looked good. But scary nonetheless.

I pedaled hard on the bike, looked down at the computer and realized I wasn’t halfway done with the ride, but rather just a few miles into it. And then a mile later I threw my chain. So a lot of people that shouldn’t have passed me. Later I’d pass a lot of them back. Without that chain problem I would have had a great ride.

This race runs through a planned neighborhood and all the nice people came out to cheer the racers on, which was pretty cool. They had bleachers up near the finish line. More people were braving the rain and unseasonably cool — I’ve never shivered in August, before today — to urge you into the run and congratulate you when you return.

The run weaved down a golf cart path through the woods, alongside the lake we just swam through and back again. Too many people passed me on the run, but that was to be expected.

My time was more than expected, which was disappointing. But I finished with a smile and I didn’t finish last. So at least those two goals were met.

Great day for it. Good race. Poor triathlete.

(The Yankee, of course, had a great race.)

cycling / Friday / journalism / links / maps / movies / music / things to read / video — Comments Off
16
Aug 13

The Unofficial Unified Swampers Theory

Greasy, if Aretha Franklin says it, is a good thing.

That’s not far from one of the places where I grew up. Aretha, in the Apple promo says “You just didn’t expect them to be as funky or as greasy as they were. This documentary looks great, if only to answer the question ‘Why Muscle Shoals?’

Which is the same as asking ‘Why not anywhere else?’

I have a theory, he said to the surprise of no one. Look at this map:

Think of all of the music that has come from the rough diamond of Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta and Nashville. All of these places are where the Mississippi basin, the Delta, the Smoky Mountains, countless churches and a wide rural storytelling tradition meet. Inside the diamond is much of Mississippi, Birmingham and, right there, Muscle Shoals. There’s a lot of lyrical fertility in there.

Music comes from all over, but there’s a timeless quality — as pop culture goes — to a lot of the things produced in and around that little diagram.

Rode a bit this afternoon, just spinning little circles with my feet over to the bike shop. Bought new tubes and some drink supplements.

The nice thing is you can go over there in spandex and they don’t even blink. They get you in and out real quick. Can’t have you scaring everyone off.

I hit the last hill, the one we live on, and topped it in one gear. Usually it takes a third of the cassette. And I did it at a speed I can’t even average and that’s going uphill.

So, naturally, I’m going to choose to believe that means I’m improving. But we all know better.

I visited a physical therapist today. He wanted to test out my shoulder. The first thing he did was jab his massive, muscular finger right down onto the tops of the screws in my shoulder.

I do not like him very much.

But he says there are problems I shouldn’t have a year-plus later, so he’s sending me to a nationally renowned orthopedic guy. If I see that person next week as planned that’ll make my third ortho.

I’m starting to wish I’d noticed that chunk of wood that I hit last summer.

Things to read: Counting the Change:

In 2008 Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBCUniversal, a big entertainment group, lamented the trend of “trading analogue dollars for digital pennies”. But those pennies are starting to add up. And even Mr Zucker, now boss of CNN Worldwide, a TV news channel, has changed his tune. Old media is “well, well beyond digital pennies,” he says.

What has changed his mind? The surge in smartphones, tablet computers and broadband speeds has encouraged more people to pay for content they can carry around with them. According to eMarketer, a research firm, this year Americans will spend more time online or using computerised media than watching television.

And a Samford student wrote this one:

According to McCay, until recently, Alabama was seen as a “pass-through” state. Traffickers from other states take their “workers” and travel through Alabama to get to another state.

“Now that you see a Memphis girl being brought to Huntsville or Madison, you begin to think, ‘Ok, maybe we’re not just a pass-through state anymore,’ and we’re seeing more and more reports over the last several years that trafficking is in Alabama,” McCay said.

“It is happening,” McCay said, “and the thing that our task force is really trying to do is just raise the awareness primarily, just let people know that it is happening, get it on their radar. If you don’t know something is happening, how do you fix it?”

And I have to go to bed early tonight because I have to get up early tomorrow. Naturally I’ll be awake most of the evening. But I must try … Tomorrow, we race.

Hope you have a lovely weekend ahead of you.

cycling / family / iPhone / overwriting / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Aug 13

Not the best day ever

I slept in, because I stayed up late, because I had a cup of tea and was wide awake for the next seven hours last night and early this morning.

So when I woke up the story was fully developed. A UPS plane had crashed on final approach into Birmingham. The pictures are horrific. The two pilots were dead. And, thankfully, for a change, I knew precisely where my step-dad was.

He flies out of the same hub as those two pilots. The co-pilot has been named, someone he doesn’t know. We’re still waiting to hear the identify of the pilot. The reporters at al.com have done an incredible job on the story if you’re interested in the latest.

I’m ready to turn away from it. I’ve covered stories about neighbors, became friends with people I covered over time. I’ve reported and written and read about some horrible things people to do to one another and have a healthy detachment.

But I’m invested a bit here, enough to set the whole day off. There were emails and Facebook and a few “That’s not him, is it?” questions.

It was not, but what could have been. I couldn’t tamp down the anxious feelings until the late evening.

So I went out for a little bike ride in the rain, down through the neighborhood, around the roundabout and out the back. I planned to turn left, but as so often happens in the saddle I changed my mind almost mid-turn and went right.

The rain picked up and I smelled the river. The stagnant water at the boat launch. The still and mild decay of a fish. The synthetic carpet of a boat. The funky tinge of artificial bait that has been too long in the tackle box and couldn’t catch anything but weeds. There is no water there, but those were the smells. It made me think of my grandfather, and so I pedaled on.

I started having a tough time seeing through my sunglasses on the rainy, graying road. I enjoy a rainy ride, but this wasn’t quite the same. I hit a sprint stretch, wheeled to the right and realized I was cheating on all the turns. I blamed the new front tire. We don’t know each other yet. It doesn’t trust me to dive into turns yet. If I listen close the hum is saying what could have been?

I was dying on everything. But my socks were getting wet, so my feet were getting heavier and, thus, faster. That’s my theory, anyway. Doesn’t always work. I found myself shifting toward my easiest gears and climbing up the biggest hill of the day, which is no big hill. It is already a forgotten blur. So was most of the rest of the ride. Raindrops and panting. Chickening out in curves, full of unease about them, feeling my bike get lighter the few times I put in some speed.

Somewhere I picked up the smell of an old grandmother’s hairspray, baked in by decades of cigarettes. I don’t know why I smelled these things today, since I usually can’t smell anything. But I love being on my bike because it gives me time to think about things like that, the sensations, analogies and forgetting the whompwhompwhomp of my legs.

I took that picture above just before getting home, dawdling in the sprinkling rain and the purple and orange sky. I lingered to get the right fuzzy shot because a crisp one didn’t fit the mood. I took my time because getting home means going inside means cleaning my bike — the no-fun part of riding in the rain.

And there was still UPS plane talk. What could have been is such a bizarrely odd sensation. I got so distracted I almost gnarled two knuckles of my left hand in the spokes of my bike’s back wheel.

Here’s the last story I’m reading about it tonight:

More than 13,000 bags made by Freeset USA, a local nonprofit that provides jobs to women in Calcutta, India, were among the cargo lost when a UPS cargo plane crashed Wednesday morning near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

The company, which lost what amounted to its entire fall inventory of bags, has decided to begin selling a T-shirt to raise money for the families of the two pilots killed in the crash, according to a news release from the company.

[…]

The company is also worried about its 200 employees, mostly women freed from Calcutta’s sex trade.

People are donating via Twitter. Freeset’s Facebook page says they are working on the design. I know this company through Samford connections. They do incredible work and I’m glad they are involved here. Can’t wait to brag on them. That will be the best thing for a perfectly sad and strange day.